David Kessler: EPISODE LINK

Finding Meaning Book: LINK

TRANSCRIPTS:

Colleen:

Welcome back to hot flashes and cool topics podcast today. We are speaking with

grief expert David Kessler.

David:

Welcome to the show Glad to be with you both.

Thank you for having me

Colleen:

It’s our pleasure. And you know, we usually jump right in,

but I have to say just thank you for all that you’re doing. I think the topic of

grief and loss is such obviously a sensitive subject, but a lot of people don’t

know what to do and they think there’s a certain way to grieve. So having resources

like your books, you’ve done several books, but your newest finding meaning the sixth

stage of grief workbook that goes along with your book and I’m showing it to the

YouTube audience, it just offers such guidance and support for people.

So thank you for everything that you are doing.

 

David:

– Oh, well, I am committed to it

and wanna help any way I can. You know, I always like to say right up front that

grief is a small word for so many big things that people often think grief means a

death of a person, which of course it does, but I also say,

you know, grief is a death. Like when we say a breakup,

that’s the death of the romantic relationship. When we Of course, that’s the death

of the marriage, you know, when we’re talking about losing your job,

that’s the death of that paycheck with those people. Even things like, you know,

there’s so much discussion these days about narcissistic abuse, that’s the death of

yourself you have to deal with, even the changes in our life. So many things,

you know, that we talk about that it’s like The old us isn’t here anymore and we

have to make peace with the new us

 

Bridgett:

Yes, yes, and you know even Colleen and I were

discussing In this age where we are right now with parents that are aging and

Issues with dementia or Alzheimer’s That it also could be like that person is still

alive physically, but the death of the anticipatory – Anticipatory grief.

David:

– Absolutely,

anticipatory grief. And you know, when I think about dementia, I think about one

diagnosis that has hundreds of little losses in it. Some little losses, some huge

losses. And the other thing that is in our world now is estrangement is a huge

loss and they’re still alive.

 

 

 

Colleen:

Yes. Oh, absolutely. So many layers to it and it’s so

complicated and many people just don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to

say and you share advice and offer support and specific wording.

 

David:

I’m sorry for your

loss, but don’t try to take control. Don’t make it about you and really helpful

things. And I thought we could start kind of with the five stages of grief and

some things that people don’t realize that they think, “Okay, I need to go through

every stage and I need to go through it sequentially.”

Colleen:

Can you talk about that?

 

David:

Sure. So first of all, the stages were identified by my teacher and co -author

Elizabeth Kubler -Ross decades ago. And I always hear her whispering,

she’s no longer with us, but I always hear her going, “Make sure you tell them the

stages aren’t linear.” You know, I think they’ve sort of been reduced to the five

easy steps for grieving and there’s no five easy sequential steps for grieving.

Grieving is hard. And those stages are

That’s the, I can’t believe this is happening.

 

2. Anger, I’m angry this is happening.
3. Bargaining is all the what ifs and if onlys.
4. depression is the sadness and
5. acceptance is the trying to make peace with the situation.
6. And I can go through all

those stages in an hour, backwards, forwards, you know, grief is messy.

And so I think that like, you know, with our media, it’s, you know, those stages

have been trying to reduce to like, just go through these sequentially and you’ll be

fine. And anyone who’s been through grief knows that’s not how it works.

Bridgett:

– So I

know I’ve watched your videos and that people often ask, when will I stop grieving?

And you have a really great answer from that.

–

David:

You know, it’s interesting. I think

about, you know, when it’s the death of a person and someone goes, when will my

wife stop grieving? When will, you know, My sister, my brother, I always say, how

long is the person going to be dead? As if they’re going to be dead for a long

time, you are going to grieve for a long time. It doesn’t mean we’ll always grieve

with pain. You know, my hope is with support and some insight and some tools,

we can eventually grieve with more love than pain.

Colleen:

You write also about the sixth stage of grief, which is finding meaning. And if

you’re comfortable with it, can you talk about how this book and this subsequent

workbook came about? –

 

Colleen:

Sure, I have been a grief expert for decades doing this work.

I have been privileged to write before these last books.

I had already written five I, I came out of a world that had, you know,

I had a horrible childhood, there was abuse, there was physical abuse, emotional

neglect, sexual abuse, I mean, I had a lot. And then my mother died and it was in

one of the first mass shootings in the US. And so I had a lot of trauma and

grief in my childhood. And this has been a quest for me to find my own healing

and help others find theirs. And after decades of doing this work, I thought,

you know, most of my grief is behind me. I mean, of course I was going to get

old and my friends would die, but the horrific grief was in my childhood and in my

rearview mirror until my younger son, David, died unexpectedly at 21 years old and

brutal, brutal. I was on the floor and couldn’t get up and I had to take my own

medicine. I had to go to a grief counselor. I had to go to a grief group.

I took my contacts out and put glasses on and you know put a baseball cap on and

I went to a grief group where I had to sit five feet from my books on a table

and not I couldn’t say to anyone that’s me I’m the grief expert I had to sit

there as the father that buried a child and so it was just horrible and I also in

time had my mind that was watching me do this and I thought is everything I’ve

done and believed in and helped people with is it is it true is it still helpful

and I would go yep you’re in denial I couldn’t believe he was gone yeah you’re

angry yeah I was angry at God in the universe and all that. Yep there’s the what

ifs, there’s the sadness. Then when I began to wrestle with acceptance like I’m

going to have to accept his death someday, I was like that can’t be it like what

I’m just going to accept this and that’s that. It wasn’t enough And I think we’re

a generation that acceptance isn’t enough. And I thought there has to be more.

And I began researching meaning. I went back and watched Victor Frankel.

I read Victor Frankel’s book again, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” I wanted to see how,

would this meaning help? And

I think one of the disconnects for some people when we say meaning is they hear

meaning and they go, “There’s no meaning in a horrible death. There’s no meaning in

a murder. There’s no meaning in COVID. There’s no meaning in a terrible divorce,

a betrayal, abuse.” And what I researched and brought forth and began writing about

was meaning is not in the horrible event. Meaning is in us.

It’s what we do after. It’s what we do after the tragedy. And so I was so honored

that the Elizabeth Kubler -Ross family and foundation gave me permission to add a

sixth stage to her iconic stages. And I just thought I loved the chance to remind

people what the stages are and what the stages aren’t so that they wouldn’t get

misused. And, you know, I hate that like people have put a prescription on each

other like go through those stages. And I want to say, you know, and I’m not

adding a six mandatory stage either for anyone. But that became the book Finding

Meaning. And now it’s the new workbook. And I always tell people with the new

workbook that you don’t have to have read any of the other books. You can literally

start with this book. You can start with the workbook. And I wanted the workbook to

be like we’re just sitting at your kitchen table just doing some things that help

you with your grief. In this workbook, I really tried to put in even some of the

stories that had really touched people so that people saw how meaning occurs in the

most unique, fascinating ways. And I think one of the things is that a myth is we

think, oh, is he talking about me starting a charity or am I starting a non -profit

for women who have been through domestic abuse? I mean, is this what I got to do?

And I tell people meaning is in the moments. Meaning is in those little moments.

And you know, just things like there was one person who her father had put his way

through

medical school by being a waiter. And he remembered how hard it was.

So in his life, he was such a generous tipper. And she said, now that her dad has

died, she, you know, whenever she goes to a restaurant, she leaves a really hearty

tip in her dad’s honor. It’s those little moments of meaning that are so powerful.

Colleen:

Right, right before we jump into the actual, because you have some amazing exercises

in the workbook, I thought we could just touch on the seven different factors that

guide the concept of meaning, because that’s in your main book. And because I think

a lot of people, like you said before, say there is no meaning in this death,

there’s no meaning in how it’s going to affect my life, there’s no meaning in

what’s that I’m going to be in pain from this loss.

Can you talk a little bit about the seven different factors that guide it?

 

David:

And I

put those right in the workbook too so that everyone can see them. So here’s what

they are.

*The first one is meaning is relative and personal. Meaning is relative and

personal. No one else can find our meaning but us.

*Two,meaning takes time. You may not find it until months or even years after loss.

You know, there’s people who are like, I got to find the meaning right away. Well,

you can’t, you know, skip the pain and just go right to the meaning.

*The next one is meaning doesn’t require understanding. It isn’t necessary to

understand why someone died in order to find meaning. You know,

sometimes we think, “Well, I gotta have all the answers.” And then, “No, you don’t

need to have all the answers.” For even when you find meaning, you won’t feel it

was worth the cost. Like, it’s never gonna bring back our loved ones or fix the

marriage that, you know,

ended up in a divorce, and

*five, this is a big one.

Your loss is not a test, a lesson, something to handle, a gift or a blessing.

Loss is what happens in life. Meaning is what you make happen after the loss.

*And six, only you can find your own meaning.

* And seven, meaningful connections can

heal painful memories.

So I think they give us a little guidance on this idea of

meaning. But I will tell you, one of the challenges with a title like Finding

Meaning is so many people go, “Oh, I bought it or I might buy it,

but I’m not ready to find the meaning.” The book, the workbook and the book,

but the workbook especially is all about excavating the pain. It’s moving through the

pain so that the meaning underneath is revealed.

Colleen:

You talk about in the workbook, you start it with the power of your grief. And I

think that for people is like you said, kind of where you hit a wall when you

first lose someone because it seems overwhelming and you talk about new perspectives

on your grief narrative. Can we dive into that a little bit?

 

David:

Sure. You know,

we have events in our life and we have stories around the events.

Let me just give you an example of that. There was a woman who shared with me she

was going through a horrible time in her own life and

I noticed it was colored with a story of

everyone was going to leave me. Of course, the divorce happened and I was so

curious. And so I talked to her about it. And she shared that in her childhood,

when she was probably five years old, her parents were divorcing. Her dad was

packing up the car, his station wagon. She was devastated.

She loved her dad so much. And she said after he packed everything up. She was in

the driveway watching him, standing in the driveway when he got into the car. And

she said, “To me, do you know how in any book or movie we’ve seen,

that’s the moment the dad turns around to his little five -year -old girl and say,

“Don’t you worry, honey. Daddy’s coming back for you. Daddy’s never going to forget

you.” She said, “That didn’t happen. He just drove away.” She said,

“I wasn’t even worth a second look.” That’s the event.

There were no adults in that moment to explain to her that this was not about her.

So she took that event in and internalized it, and we make up stories about it.

And she made up the story of, I’m not worth another look. I’m not lovable.

Everyone leaves me. And so the event, we make conclusions from it.

And then that becomes our belief system. And then decades later, when her husband’s

divorcing her, she’s like, well, of course, Of course, everyone leaves me.

And so in our grief and loss, you would think that the grief and loss would be

enough, but we have all these perspectives we bring to it.

And I wanted some exercises just to help people have an idea that some of these

stories could be a little additional suffering. You know I love,

I talk about the stories of our mind and I love Annie Lamont’s quote, she says “my

mind is like a bad neighborhood I never want to go into alone.” And I feel that

way, like I live in an area that at 3 a .m. I could walk a couple of blocks to

with ATM, it is safer to walk to that ATM than to walk into my mind at the ATM

at night, right? So, you know, sometimes our mind, which we think would be so

helpful in grief is not always helpful. So I wanted people to realize we begin with

how we do tell our stories. –

 

Colleen:

And in the workbook you do that so beautifully and

you actually have this large wheel you call him like the gang of emotions and it’s

almost like by writing down what emotions you’re feeling after the loss looking at

all those emotions you could say oh wait a second but I was angry before I even

had this loss or I was depressed before and it kind of adds that first step of

clarity and what you’re feeling because of this loss versus what your overall life

experience that you’re feeling from. –

 

David:

And I’ll tell you, it’s so fascinating because

I put what I call a feeling wheel and what’s fascinating about that is

when we think about that, I say to people, tell me what you’re feeling. And they

go, I don’t know or nothing, or we think we have three emotions. Happy, sad,

angry. And I’ll go, I don’t know what I’m feeling,

and I’ll have them look at the feeling wheel, and they’ll see tons of feelings,

and they’ll go, oh, well, I’m feeling rejected, discouraged,

amused, valuable, worthless, relaxed,

pensive. I mean there’s so many different feelings and to help them explore these

feelings because I’m kind of mapping out our inner world and here’s the thing.

You can’t heal what you don’t feel.

Feelings are our way through this. Now, one of the challenges with these feelings is

we’re the first generation that has the luxury

of feelings on feelings. We think, I’m sad,

oh my gosh, but there’s so many sadder things in the world, I shouldn’t be sad.

I’m angry, oh, I was taught anger taught anger is inappropriate and we throw these

half felt feelings behind us. And we live with them. And I always tell people

because look, it’s our nature to avoid pain. I always tell people the problem is

what we run from pursues us and what we face transforms us.

And so, we have to feel them, but we got to start with identifying them.

 

Bridgett:

Right, that is so important there. I know a lot of people too, walking through my

own brain, compare. Just like you just said, oh, but there’s so many worse things

in the world I shouldn’t feel this way, or what they went through something so much

worse than I did, I shouldn’t be complaining or feelings, whatever feeling I am

having about my loss.

Bridgett:

Yeah. And, you know, here’s the problem with comparing.

When we’re comparing, we’re in our mind and we don’t have a broken mind.

We have a broken heart. And the other challenge is.

There’s this the hierarchy of losses out there.

And it’s not true, you know, people say, which is the worst loss? You know grief,

which is the worst loss? Is it a child’s death? Is it your spouse of 50 years?

Is it your sweet pet that’s by your side every single day for 17 years?

Which is the worst loss? Is it a divorce where they’re in the world rejecting you

every day? Is it the loss of our youth? What’s the worst loss? And I always say

yours. Yours is the worst. Like I can’t know another person’s loss.

And all tears count. All tears count. –

 

Colleen:

That’s so powerful for people to hear,

especially those who are grieving right now.

 

Bridgett:

What about, and you talk about this in

the workbook as well, timelines, when you’re grieving and someone says to you,

okay, it’s been six months. You know, how much longer are you gonna be in this?

Can we talk about the fact that there is no real timeline? ‘Cause you mentioned how

long the person is dead is how long you’re gonna grieve someone. –

 

David:

It is sad how

we use time against one another. I mean, I think about like, what a, you know, a

devastating loss is the loss of our parents. And people go, they were 90,

they were a hundred. And I’ll go, do the math. That means you had 60,

70 years with this person who’s now gone from the planet. How could it not be

devastating? So we do use time in negative ways.

Here’s the thing. There is some markers out there. There is anticipatory grief,

as we mentioned. It’s the grief before the death or before the event. It can be

before the divorce, before when we get a diagnosis for someone, when someone’s got a

mental illness, addiction, Alzheimer’s, it shows up in so many different ways. Then

when the event happens or the person dies, we’re thrown into what I call acute

grief. Acute grief can be anywhere from a month to nine months.

It looks different on everyone. And acute grief, I don’t know when we’re in it

except that it’s just happened, but I can feel when people are coming out of it.

They say things like, “I’m just beginning to catch my breath. I’m just beginning to

feel my feet on the floor again.” And then we move into what I call early grief.

Here’s the interesting thing. If I went to our local mall or our local downtown

area of our town and I said, “When’s early grief to people?” People would say I

don’t know early grief is what the first month, the first three months, the first

six months, I don’t know maybe a year. I think of early grief as the first two

years. As the first two years, you’re still in early grief and then we go more

into mature grief and we will deal with it for the rest of our life. We’ll often

miss that person. But you know, grief has so much of a longer shadow than we think

most of us. When we think grief, we think about TV grief.

Oh, our favorite TV show. What happened? Episode one, the person died.

Episode two, they went through the grief. Episode three, they go back to – Ooh,

that’s not how it works out in our lives. It’s much, much longer and much harder.

Bridgett:

– You know, another part of grief is how the outside world, and we’ve kind of

addressed this, looks at you and their expectations of you when you are going

through this grief. And an example, and I talked with Colleen before you came on,

I was a school teacher. I was an elementary school teacher and I had a little girl

in my class and there was a house fire and she died and she was in my class and

it really it hurt so badly and I had another teacher say to me because I was

angry. I was looking for people to blame. I was angry at the school system for not

acknowledging her death enough. I felt enough and Another teacher really was mean to

me and said, “Okay, well, just stop talking about it. She just was tired of hearing

me.” And the response to the outside world, I mean, do you have any advice for

people or how to deal with that?

 

David:

You know, first of all, the outside world is

grief -illiterate. You know, in some ways I say I’m teaching us what our great

-grandparents knew. And we’ve lost that in our modern world. You want to see death,

that you got to stream a TV show, you know, because things have changed now, you

know, death has moved into the hospital, or the nursing home,

it’s not in our home anymore.

The funeral, you know, parlor isn’t our parlor like our grandparents,

it’s now the funeral parlor. Many people don’t even know the parlor.

Like think of your grandparents, they probably had a parlor in front of their house.

If you have a house that was built before the 40s, you have a wide door for the

casket to go in and out. That was our parlor. And then It became the funeral

parlor and there was an article written that said your front room should not be the

parlor dying room. It should be your living room. So now even the name of our

living room is in response to we’re not going to talk about death anymore and have

it in our home. And so there is this grief illiteracy that we don’t know how to

talk about it and hear it and witness each other’s grief? Grief must be witnessed.

And here’s the thing, we know all grief does not have trauma,

but all trauma has grief. And we know from so many studies what we need,

what’s the cruelest thing we can do to someone in war besides killing them is put

them in isolation and when we’re in grief we often isolate and so many times people

will say to me oh I’ve got this loved one ever since their person died they’re

isolating and I’ll say are you sure they’re isolating and you’re not isolating them.

Because when people say Bridget, like they quit talking about it, we’re leaving you

alone in your grief. We’re isolating you. And one of the things I put in the

workbook is I put a little shame section on how to know if you have shame in your

grief. And it’s fascinating to think about it. And people can, even if they want to

just get a look at how easy the workbook is, they can go to shameworksheet .com and

just download that shame worksheet to go, oh, maybe I have a little shame in my

grief that you didn’t even realize.

Colleen:

It’s so true. And I think the second part of your book moving towards meaning, you

talk about acceptance and disloyalty. And a lot of people think that I’ve never

liked the term moving on, because I don’t think you ever move on for grief, you

just learn to walk with it. But a lot of people feel if it’s the loss of a

spouse, loss of a child, first time you laugh again, you’re being disloyal. The

first time you think about being with another person, you have some great exercises

in the book, but can you talk about the disloyalty factor?

 

David:

Yeah, it’s interesting.

I put a disloyalty checklist because for a few reasons. Number one, people get

afraid to open a grief workbook. And someone said to me,

“I bought it. And as we talked about before, it sold out the first day. I’m so

thrilled that people are utilizing it. Hopefully it’s all back in stock and they

have reprints by the time we are airing. But I think just it’s selling out the

first day shows how hungry we are for support and information.

But someone says that “I bought it,

but I’m afraid to open it.” And I said, “Can you tell me more about it?” And the

person said, “I don’t want to go into the pain.” And I said, “Oh, dear one,

I wish the pain was in the book, and as long as you avoid the book and put it

on your shelf, you don’t have the pain, but I said the pain is not in the book.

The pain is in you. The book is, the workbook is helping you get the pain out and

put it on paper. So for people who are so worried, like this is going to be

really hard. He’s going to make me write about my deepest pain. Oh, I put like a

disloyalty checklist in there. You can just check some of those boxes And we don’t

realize all the places we’re disloyal, disloyal thinking,

we’re being disloyal to the person who died, thinking we’re being disloyal to our

ex, thinking maybe we’re being disloyal to our kids and the memory of their parents.

It just, you know, One of the things I often think about is decades ago,

if you had a death, you wore black.

And black wasn’t a style. The only people wearing black were people who were

mourning. And by the way, I always say grief is what’s inside of us. Mourning is

what’s on the outside. Mourning is what we show. So you would wear black.

At the end of the year your clergy would say to you, you can now take your

widow’s weeds off or they can remain on if you want to wear them longer.

However, you do now have permission to begin to live again.

There is not a moment in our society that anyone says,

“When you’re ready, we’re not rushing you, but you do have permission to live again

when you’re ready.” And because we don’t have that moment, it’s easy to feel like

we’re being disloyal. I can’t tell you, I just finished up a course that I was

doing for Death of a Spouse and so many people will share, “Oh,

I could never date again. That would be cheating.” Now, some people, they will never

want to date again and that’s completely okay. It’s their choice. Others may want to

do that someday but I remind those who want to do it someday when they’re ready

and they go “but that would be cheating” I’ll go your marriage vows were till death

do you part. You actually kept the contract and fulfilled the vows.

It is complete now. It is complete and you have to grieve that marriage and

cheating does not exist. No one takes a vow of, you know,

till death do us part and all eternity. You completed your vows.

 

Colleen:

You also talk about the four techniques to resolve guilt in the book. Like it’s

It’s not just you highlight what you’re talking about, but then you also give

exercises and meaningful reflection in the book to really kind of say, okay, if you

don’t know where to start, try this, or if this doesn’t work, try that. And you

talk about a living amends contract. Can you share that?

 

David:

Sure. Well,

first of all, the workbook has the most pages on guilt because guilt is such a

companion in our grief and we often feel guilty that somehow we contributed that you

know what if I had made them get a third doctor’s opinion what if I wasn’t so

busy being mom maybe the divorce wouldn’t have happened all those what ifs and ifs

only. So I really wanted to give them step by step ways to begin to release the

guilt. And one of the reasons forgiveness is a fascinating topic.

One of the reasons forgiveness doesn’t work for a lot of us is we’re trying to

forgive a lie. If you are trying to forgive that guilt.

Oh, I contributed to their death because I forgot that these are all real examples.

I forgot to tell the emergency room of the hospital to check his heart. It’s my

fault. Oh, I need to practice self -forgiveness. And you don’t do the work or have

techniques to realize, oh, the emergency department of the hospital knows to check

the heart. But we turn on ourselves. The guilt is just insidious. And here’s the

thing I just want to really let your viewers and listeners know, our mind would

always rather be guilty than helpless.

We want control. We want to find, “Oh, it’s ’cause I forgot to tell the emergency

department.” ‘Cause that gives me a sense of control and if I have control, more

deaths won’t happen.

Our mind is predictable and protective. It’s always trying to give us the illusion

of control. So if we try to forgive ourselves for something that just isn’t true,

we’re like, “I don’t know why I can’t get past it.” Now, the other piece you asked

about is a living amends. Many times people will go, “I just,

I wish I would have done this or that, but the person has died,

I can’t apologize to them anymore.” I always say,

first of all, if you say something sincerely in your heart,

I believe they’ll feel it in theirs. But a living amends is something I borrowed

from some other worlds. A living amends is what to do when you can’t make an

apology. And let me give you an example from outside the world of grief.

a person who was deep in their addiction went to the local store,

local department store and stole a hundred dollars worth of items.

In their healing, they needed to make amends. They went into their local department

store and they said, “Here’s $100. I stole some things.

I want to give it back.” The sales clerk said, “I can’t. I can’t take $100.

There’s nothing to ring up. Thank you for the apology, but there’s nothing to ring

up.” The person said, “I have to give it. I have to give it. I’ve got to make

amends.” They brought the manager where the manager said, “Look, there’s nothing we

can do. We appreciate that it out, but there’s nothing we can do.” That person went

around the store and bought another hundred dollars worth of things,

but this time they bought instead of stole. They bought a hundred dollars worth of

things and had them in their bag and then walked around the store putting the

things back they had just purchased. So they were actually paying it back.

Now how does that relate to this world and the exercise I do? A living amends is

where we say I’ll take something simple like I never told my dad I loved him.

I want to make a living amends to him. What does that mean?

And I have someone do like living amends in the workbook. That means that for the

rest of my life, whenever I love someone, I’m going to say it in honor of my dad.

And that becomes the living, breathing apology. maybe you argued and called some

names, you weren’t your best self. A living amends would be for the rest of my

life. My apology to the person who died is when I’m in an argument with someone,

I’m not going to name call anymore. So those are the living amends and I really

walk people on how to do them.

 

Bridgett:- And they don’t have to, oh, go ahead. I was gonna say, they don’t have to be,

like you said, starting a charity. I mean, that’s great, they are. But they could

just be, yes, yeah. –

David:

Before we get into the final part of the workbook,

which is Life After Loss, I want the listeners to understand that the workbook sold

out very quickly. Hopefully by the time we air this, it will be back in stock. You

can go to– – I promise it will be. – Okay, promise it will be. and go to

griefbook .com because AI has a book out that is not this book.

You are looking for the teal one. I am showing it on the YouTube channel, but you

can also, we’ll have the link in our show notes. – It’s full teal. The AI made

sure it used teal also. –

Colleen:

Oh, thoughtful. –

 

David:

When you have the one that’s full teal

and the David Kessler is the author. And that’s why if you go to griefbook .com,

we’ll connect you with Amazon Barnes & Noble Independent Bookstore. Just make sure

David Kessler is the author, right? Because it’s completely unacceptable that we have

a three -part class for anyone who orders it that will help you begin,

that will help you begin. We’ll do some of it together. which is so helpful.

 

Colleen:

Like I said, so many people don’t know where to turn and the fact that this is

something that they can do to help themselves. It’s a personal thing. You’re not

comparing yourself to anyone else going through this journey. And the third section

of your book talks about life after death. And again, guilt, big factor in that,

but you talk about the hero’s journey. And I don’t think people who are going

through grief think about their journey as a hero’s journey. So can we start with

that in the life after?

 

David:

Sure, you know, it’s interesting, I have always loved the

hero’s journey and people might not be aware of it, but probably any movie or story

you really love is a version of the hero’s journey was done by Joseph Campbell,

and it is Star Wars and Lord of the Rings in any DC or Marvel,

you know, all of those. And it starts out where life is going along and it’s good.

And then something bad happens, like take “Star Wars” Luke Skywalker’s parents are

killed. And there is the refusal of the call.

We think in our I’m never going to live again. There’s no help for me out there.

This is just horrible. I’m never going to survive this. We refuse to call this

can’t be happening to me. And then we move into the dark nights,

the dark part of our life.

And that’s what the hero’s journey looks like. And in the end,

we come out

With everything that happened happened the divorce happened the death happened the

horrible things happened But we are changed forever and it turns out we’re the hero

of our own journey and I want people to know You know,

we go through excavating all the pain in the workbook and then at the end, I have

the hero’s journey laid out as they might know it in grief and then I ask people

to write down their own hero’s journey and it’s fill in the blanks you don’t have

to know the hero’s journey you just fill it in and you know the thing is when

there’s been devastating loss we have to find our life again and our story in.

Grief makes the story about the other. We become all about the person who died,

or we become all about our ex, or the divorce, or whatever. And the hero’s journey

is about coming back to ourselves forever changed and even stronger.

Colleen:

And there’s somewhere in the book where you talk about how

Grief can walk with you as love and not pain. And I think that’s really important

for people to think about, ’cause like you said, there’s no timeline. You will feel

the grief and the loss of that person, but yet you can feel the love that, ’cause

the love didn’t die. And I think that can you just talk a little bit about, ’cause

I think it’s really important for people to understand it doesn’t always have to be

as painful as the initial grief.

 

David:

Yeah, that when we talk about a loved one dying,

grief is love. Grief at its core is love.

My website is grief.com. The tagline underneath the subtitle is “Because Love Never

Dies.” You know, I love my parents. They’re long gone.

I love my son every day who died, my younger son. I still parent him.

I still send him love. So, the love continues. You know,

I tell people, you know, death has done enough. Don’t give death any more power

than it has. It has the power to end the physical body, but it doesn’t have the

power to end our relationship. but doesn’t have the power to end our love. That

continues. Now, when we talk about these other losses, divorce,

so many other things, abuse, bad things that happen in the world, a lot of that is

perhaps sometimes for the first time finding our story and finding the love for

ourselves. These horrible things in our life Get in the way of our connection to

self and we have to find our story again and find our worth again

 

Colleen:

Finding meaning the sixth stage of grief workbook is so helpful. And we really

recommend it to our listeners again griefbook .com We’ll lead you to the resources as

well as the three -part Series that you do correct.

David:

Correct. Correct. So griefbook

.com, it’ll take you to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, as well as an indie bookstore.

And just make sure you get the workbook that’s finding meaning, the workbook that

David Kessler is the author of, the full cover teal one. Thank you so much.

Bridgett:

oh, I was going to ask, do you still go around and do you do

different talks in different places?

David:

Not as much. I now have an online grief group

with twenty -six different groups in it So there’s death of a parent death of a

spouse death of a child So many different, you know, we have faith. We have

afterlife We have all kinds of groups online now and the beauty is so many times

when people hear an online group They think oh, I don’t want to go online with six

people on a zoom. The nice thing is it’s hundreds of people,

which means you can be up front talking or you can be in the back with your

camera off and no one ever sees you. So there’s different ways for us to grieve. I

also have a grief certificate program for therapists and coaches and people who have

been through these dark nights and want to turn pain into purpose and help one

another. So all of those can be found at grief .com. And because I want people to

know there’s help out there.

Bridgett:

Yes. So important.

Colleen:

It really is. It’s people don’t know

where to go. They’re so overwhelmed. So thank you so much, David Kessler, for all

that you have been doing and all that you’ve done and will continue to do. And

we’ll have all the links in the show notes for finding meaning the Sixth Stage of

Grief Workbook. Thank you so much for joining us.

David:

– Oh, thank you both for having

this conversation. I appreciate it. Thank you for making it a cool topic. –

Bridgett:

Right,

thanks. It is.